Busy Sunday

I went out to the Moss this afternoon because my wife hadn't seen the viewing tower so we though a quick stroll round would do the job. However it was hooching. It was probably the busiest I have seen Flanders since we have opened the boardwalk with probably 30 + people going round in the time we were there. There were various people that I knew amongst the crowd and I chatted with several as we went round. They were all people with a link to the Moss, there were people who had volunteered on species surveys, people who had come for Christmas trees, people from local businesses that we had used for events on Flanders and local community councillor. Some of them had come down for the first time, some regulars but all had headed out to Flanders for a (freezing cold) breath of fresh air. And all had positive things to say about the Moss and how much they were enjoying their visit. It struck me that there quite a variety of ways that people came to know about the Moss and the different links that they had with the site. And 4 years ago none of them would have been out there as there was no boardwalk and virtually no links with local people. A result.
Another result (maybe) is that this blog has just got little bit better know. We were asked by the Stirling Observer if there was anything new happening at Flanders and they only thing I could think of was the blog. So a very short press release went out but also went out to a few other media. Suddenly someone in the office told me that the blog featured on the BBC Scotland website and then apparently it was in the Herald on Saturday. I even got sent a message on Facebook from a dog who had picked it up on the BBC. The pressure is on to deliver. So welcome to any new bog bloggers, I hope you enjoy what you read and maybe be encouraged to find out a bit more about this special site.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/8485561.stm

Blizzard

OK, well Wednesday there might have been a bit of spring in the air but today it was normal service resumed, winter was in the air. The first few flakes started coming down as I stepped out of the truck at Flanders where I was meeting up with local farmer and contractor Alec to look at some digger work. Within a few minutes it went dark and then it was suddenly snowing hard. We walked around the 3 jobs that were for looking at getting increasingly covered and by the time we got back to the truck Alec was white all down one side. Of course as soon as we were done with the walking the snow stopped and the sun came out.

At the edge of the Moss a buzzard perched on the top of a bush shook the snow off its shoulders. Back out onto the Moss and the scrub chippers were all happy and knocking a big whole into the trees. They are 9 days into a 24 day contract so will see plenty more of what Flanders has to throw at them. On the way back a jack snipe burst up from near my feet, put in a few half hearted zig-zags and then dropped back down onto the Moss. Usually we see a scattered few during autumn and winter but this is the first bird I've seen. They look very like their close relative the common snipe, the best way to tell the difference is that when they lift off the make no noise, they don't fly as far and they don't zig-zag as much in flight. The ground must be softening up a little for it to have come back onto the moss.

Something in the air?

I was especially delighted to meet the chair of the Kippen's Women Rural as she was leaving the car park of Flanders yesterday. Why especially? Because one evening last week I had given a talk to her group in Kippen about Flanders Moss and as a result of that this was her second visit to Flanders and some of her friends had also been out. Even better she complemented me on the dams that she could see from the path. So not only were more local people getting out to enjoy the Moss but they were visiting with knowledge of the Moss. Usually I am pleased that people have stayed awake in one of my talks so its great when they have taken on board the complexities of managing Flanders.

Once up the tower it was a glorious end to the afternoon. The sun was squeezing through the clouds, lighting up the birch and tower. Far in the distance the tracked chipper was roaring like a autumn stag but otherwise there was silence. The gentle breeze was just cold not icy like it has been recently and it might have just been my imagination but there seemed to be a quiet, warm anticipation. Maybe spring is in the air?

2000 A Day

The Moss is still frozen . The weather has warmed up but it hasn't made too much difference out there. In some places it is like strolling on concrete and normally walking on the Moss is never that easy. But in others it has soften a little and then it becomes like walking with one leg a foot shorter than the other, as your foot will suddenly break through the frozen crust and sink nearly to knee depth. The next couple of steps maybe OK but then the other leg suddenly shortens. Not much fun and very hard work.
But the geese are coming back in greater numbers each day and this is great. More are feeding on the fields surround the moss and today a small group of lapwings were nearby showing that some parts of the surface were softening enough for them to probe for food. Out on the lochan in the middle of Flanders were more signs that the geese were back . The lochan was still frozen solid but the surface was littered with goose poo where they have obviously been roosting. Geese eat grass but grass isn't that nutritious so geese have to eat an awful lot of grass. The result is that each goose can do up to 2000 poos a day and as a result you usually know if geese have been around. Close up each individual poo had slightly melted the surface of the ice leaving a star burst of melted channels with a green and white centre. Great design, maybe it would make a good logo for Flanders Moss ?

The Eyes of A Sheep.

Yesterday I was looking through the eyes of a sheep, today I am thinking like a birch tree. This is the lot of a reserve manager, you have to wear many hats.
Yesterday I was out with Alan, a grazing specialist looking at part of the Moss to work out how good it would be to be grazed by sheep. We want to get sheep grazing again on parts of the Moss so that they can help us stop the trees spreading by eating them. But the bog is a tough place for sheep being exposed to wild weather, being very wet under foot and there being not much in the way of tasty food to eat. So when we plan a fenced area for the sheep we try to make sure that it includes some cover for them to get out on the wind, some drier areas and some patches of better grass. I learned from Alan that in the early spring the first "bite" for sheep is the cotton grass especially the new shoots and the juicy bottoms of the stems. The sheep tug up the stems and munch the bottom part. It seems from Alan that we have our grazing areas well planned from a sheep point of view so we are working on getting sheep out there later in the year. Watch this space.
As for being a birch tree well they do different things on different parts of the Moss. In some parts they grow vigorously and set lots of seed while in other places they are more fragile and are killed off more quickly. It can be hard to work out why this is, it could be the levels of plant food available in the peat, it could be the slope of the ground which makes it drier, it could be due to the ground cover with grasses seemingly easier for the seeds to grow on compared to the heather. This is important as I am meeting the contractors with the tracked chipper to work out which area of birch trees they need to clear that is not going to grow back quickly. Once got going they will chip the branches and put the chips into the drainage ditches to help block them up. So we get 2 birches with one stone, removed scrub and blocked ditches both make the Moss wetter and help to bring back the special bog plants. The filling in the ditches is the real fun, I've been doing that since I was 10 !

Vutures and wildebeests

It is one of those dark winter days where it the days never quite seems to arrive. The sky is lowering like a Egdon Heath at the start of the Return of the Native. There is a bitterly cold east wind and I can't decide whether it is snowing, raining, hailing or just dropping little round fluffy icy balls.
I am out on the Moss to check over a scrub area that some contractors are going to cut. Much of the snow has gone revealing the muted winter pelt of the bog but there are still white patches like deer bums that catch my eye. The bog surface is still rock hard, there is no feeding for the woodcock, snipe and jack snipe that you might usually come across at this time of year. I note some rhododendron seedlings regrowing from a patch that we have cut in the past. Normally I would pull them out root and all and hang them in a try to die but with the ground frozen that is impossible. The first sign of life I see, if life it is, is a fresh gizzard lying on a hummock, the remains of a bird caught and eaten by a sparrowhawk or maybe even a hen harrier or red kite. And then some real deer bums, not white of roe but the beige ones of red deer as a large herd file out of the trees and head across the moss. But the treat of the day is a red kite, possibly the owner of the gizzard, that suddenly appears overhead. Maybe it came along to see what in the way of prey had been disturbed by the deer herd moving across the moss. Our own version of vultures, wildebeests and the Serengeti here in central Scotland !

The Pinkies are back in town.

I was out onto the moss to do a quick check of the boardwalk and tower. The thaw had started, a little but the track and parts of the path and car park were like polished glass. Bambi impressions were the name of the day. The bog itself was rock hard, as hard as I have ever seen it in nearly 10 years working on Flanders. However every so often the surface gives and the liquid peat bubbles up. The Moss was very quiet, just a mistaken great tit calling like it was spring and a couple of nosy ravens going about their nefarious business diverted to check out what I was doing. I then realised why it was so quiet. Where had all the geese gone ? I realised that the usual background of goose noise and movements had ceased. It made sense really, with the snow and ice there was no food for them and no safe water to roost on at night. So they must have up sticks and headed south or to the coast. In fact the Carse of Stirling and the Lake of Menteith and really a stopping off point rather than a major wintering place. In October pink footed geese arrive from Iceland and congregate at certain points before dispersing. Dupplin Loch near Auchterader is one such place where up to 50000 geese roost in October. They spread out during the day and many feed on the stubble fields of the Carse at that time of the year. Having filled up they mainly move south the parts of England for the winter. It is known from marking birds on legs and necks that some pink feet moved a lot in the winter from place to place looking for food. Stubble fields, potatoes field and winter cereals nowadays have mostly replaced the original inter feeding on salt marshes. However some birds stay on the Carse for the whole of the winter and again from ringing of birds it is known that these birds return and winter on the Carse each year using the same fields every winter. By March we will be seeing more geese on the Carse as the ones that wintered south start moving north, this time feeding on the short sheep grazed grass. driving away from the Moss heading back to the office I came across a small party of pinkies grazing a field away from the road, the first for a couple of weeks. They have moved back north or in from the coast when the slight rise in temperature revealed some grass.

The New Year on Flanders

It is a new year but the new year is coming in with weather just like the old year went out with. What a winter. This is now 3 weeks of hard frost and 2 weeks of snow cover of some sort and with no sign of it warming up. holly and I headed out on slippery roads to check the rain gauge on Flanders and see what the Moss and its inhabitants were looking like in this big freeze.
We walked across the airfield to the old SWT reserve in a bitterly cold east wind, the sky a quilt of coloured rags black, grey, yellow and blue. The air was as cold as old iron and the ground as hard as it too. The surrounding fields were covered white only broken with red deer tracks and scraps where they had come off the Moss to scratch for meagre few mouthfuls of grass. But once on the bog the heather stuck through the snow giving a checkerboard black and white carpet that was only broken by the russet red of the bracken around the drier edges. The birch woodland edge rattled in the wind, the spidery branches blotted with smudges of witches brooms. Walking across the bog was hard going, the surface partially frozen only to break through to welly depth every few steps to reveal bright green sphagnum and black ooze. We didn't expect much water in the rain gauge, 51.4 mm showed a dry month. At that moment I was glad as emptying it with bare fingers was a freezing job and it was done quickly. Just as we finished a grey curtain swept over us and we were covered in feather like flakes of snow. But it quickly went and we headed back off the Moss. Holly decided we should leave a small maker to the visitors and built the smallest snow man on the Carse on the top of one of the fence posts while I tried to capture the cold of the Moss on film. It was a small but happy man. On the walk back across the airfield the only sign of life were crows and rooks methodically searching for fatalities of the cold.
At the viewing tower and boardwalk there was more sign of humans activities, a fair few people had been around the path sampling the frozen bog. From the tower the snow revealed lumps and bumps of past activity that couldn't usually been seen. The ridges and furrows of the old conifer plantation to the west showed like a zebra skin hearth rug. Closer in to the tower Holly was reading names in the black and white patterns of snow and heather, making sense of the hieroglyphs the bog had created. But then another curtain of snow blew in and drove us back to the truck, the Christmas cake waiting for us there an additional motivating factor. As I drove back the Moss had seemed so devoid of life that I couldn't help wonder if all birdlife has perished and if there will be any birdsong in a few months time.